I apologize for the delay. I had some stuff come up and some writers block (same old excuses, I know). I'll have the final season up tomorrow, though it'll be a lot shorter. I kind of just wore myself out with long descriptions and didn't feel up to writing more of them.
25 Galena, 253
Grendus hauled the rock to the dump site, silently grateful that he had been chosen as treasurer so he only had to do this part time. Rounding a corner a little too quickly, he nearly ran headlong into Diefortheswarm.
“I'm sick and tired of this place. If I don't get a decent place to work and live...” he said, barely holding in his rage. “I can't function here. Not with the amount of stress I'm under.”
Grendus set the stone down. “Hey man, I'm doing most of the administrative work, you're just putting an official head on it so the other caravans don't get wise to what's going on,” he said, trying to be both gentle and at the same time express his own anger. “If anyone needs an office for stress relief, it's me. Preferably with a real chair.”
“Listen, if I don't get a decent office, I'm gonna let the liaison know you seized power to lead a rebellion against the mountainhome,” Dfts said, his beard twitching. Grendus wasn't sure if that was out of anger or if he had caught the beardmites that were spreading through the fortress, but either way it was a bad sign.
“Alright, look. We need to dig out some offices to get ready for other nobles anyways. If I can have one of the new offices, and, say, a copper throne instead of that muddy boulder you saddled me with, I'll set you up with a full suite – bedroom, dining room, office, tomb, the works,” Grendus said, shifting to get behind the boulder he had been carrying. He didn't like the gleam in Diefortheswarm's eye.
“You have a week. Otherwise, I'll show the miners a new use for a mining pick.” Dfts turned, lifted his own boulder onto his shoulder, and began to climb the stairs. Grendus shook his head and scratched his beard. He felt something twitch. He really hoped it was his face.
As Grendus delivered his own boulder, he heard the ominous silence of someone waiting until he turned around to deliver a message. In his six months of leadership he had grown to hate that noise. They invariably delivered them when he least expected it and made him hurt himself. He stood slowly and turned to face the void where he knew the messenger was standing.
“HI MISTER TREASURER!” came a voice behind him. He jumped, startled, and tripped over a loose pebble on the floor. A sharp pain shot through his still healing foot.
“DAMNIT! What in Armok's name do you want!?” he said, turning to face the messenger. It was one of the haulers, though Grendus couldn't remember her name, Maril or Morul or something. Worthless dwarves, the Moruls. Never good at anything.
“I just wanted to let you know that they said the mag-ma is full,” the dwarf said, a cheesy grin across her face. She couldn't be more than 13, barely old enough to do an adult dwarf's work. “ They said they want to see you down by the smelters, something about or-ders.” She spoke with irritating breaks in her speech that made Grendus want to strangle her with his own beard.
Grendus breathed deeply. It wouldn't do to lose his temper in front of everybody. He felt his anger slowly simmer. “Alright. You can go now,” he said, resisting the urge to grit his teeth. She grinned energetically and skipped off. Grendus looked down at his toes. The toe that had had it's toenail ripped off was bleeding where the scab had split, and the toe next to it was black and blue. Grendus cursed. “After a copper throne, I'm going to have them make me some steel low boots for casual wear.”
Grendus returned to his room and filled out a dozen smelt order forms, posting them at each smelter so the dwarves taking tasks there would know what to do. Most began to melt goblin armor full time, but a few began to make steel of their own or make more economic metals like billon or copper. He went up to the kitchen and got a mug of Dwarven ale, alternating between soaking his sore toes and his beard. After a while he felt better, shotgunned the mug, and went back to work.
As Grendus lifted yet another boulder, he heard the ominous void appear behind him again. “Whatever it is, spit it out,” he said irritably, shifting the boulder to his other shoulder.
“Just thought you should know, Zas is speaking in tongues and running around collecting stones. I think he's possessed,” the voice said. Grendus didn't bother to look behind him. “Bah, possession. If he survives, tell him to get back to work.” He heard dwarf feet scurrying away. At least this time had been simple enough, no injuries or death threats.
A heavy weight slammed into him, knocking him off his feet. Zas continued running, not even realizing he had crashed into the fortresses current ruler. Grendus felt a sharp pain in his other foot. Looking down, he saw that the boulder he had been carrying had landed on his ankle, twisting it. “Just not my day,” he grunted. “I'm going to go do some filing, where I'll be safe.”
9 Limestone, 253:
“I warned you. I WARNED YOU! It's been two weeks, all I've got so far is two muddy rocks they're trying to pass off as a table and chair and a room still cluttered with stone!”
Grendus took his swolen foot off his flat-rock, hauled himself out of his butt-groove boulder, carefully looked for footing in the room cluttered with both slates and rocks, and looked Dfts in the eye. “Well, what do you expect? Hell, we don't have anyone who even knows what a table looks like apparently, the official description is 'a large, flattish rock',” he said, reaching slowly for his cane in case he had to defend himself.
Dfts laughed maniacly. “Well, I'll fix you. I've banned the export of ballista parts. Put just ONE ballista part on the trade depot and I'll have you up to your ears in magma. Stick that in your office and smoke it.” He turned and walked off, clucking to himself.
Grendus shook his head and poured another measure of ale to soak his ankle in. “That's downright scary, that is. I wonder what a ballista actually is.”
12 Limestone, 253:
A loud clatter and rumbling echoed through the mountain fortress, rousing a few of the sleeping dwarves. Grendus stretched, then quickly grabbed a gabbro tablet he had prepared a few weeks earlier. “Alright, listen up,” he said to the nearby haulers. “Bring them all of the bins of goblin clothing. Pretty much everything else is either already there or something we should hold onto.” The dwarves nodded grumpily and set about their tasks. Dfts began to head toward the depot, with a somewhat sour look in his eye. “Wait, Diefortheswarm,” Grendus called. Dfts turned to look at him. “I'll deal with the traders. You... uhh... keep working on whatever you were doing.” Dfts yanked on his beard, an incredibly vulgar dwarven gesture meaning literally, 'go shave your beard, elfspawn', then went back to the mason's workshop.
Grendus gritted his teeth. “Might as well get it over with,” he grunted, climbing the stairs. Taking a deep breath, he walked out to the trade depot. “Hi there, glad to see you ma...” he paused, shocked. The dwarf traders were standing there expectantly, surrounded by a literal mountain of leather. “Uhh, wow. How many herds of animals are walking around skinless?” The younger traders chuckled, but the caravan leader scowled. “'E broughtcha wat yur lass mayer toldus ta bring. Yu gotsa problem wi' dat?” he asked. He looked like the type who would rather mince flesh than mince words. “Yu gonna finda use for dis, or I'm gonna send dees wagons to da hoomans nes year, aight.” Grendus was hit with a foul blast of air from the trader's mouth. He could feel his beard hairs curling under the gaseous assault.
“Oh god, did you eat an entire mound of cheese wrapped in elf intestines. I've smelled miasma fresher than your lungs,” he said, wrapping his beard around his nose. “Seriously, we could bottle that and use it against the goblins, but we'd melt all their armor.” The trader narrowed his eyes and roared, grabbing for a nearby guard's weapon. The guards were, of course, as far away from him as they could get to avoid his body odor, which was only slightly less offensive than his breath, so this gesture failed. He raised his fist at Grendus and jutted his chin, his wiry beard sticking forward like a spear.
“Jus fordat, dees goods are gonna cost yu duble. Laugh at dat!” he said with a growl. Grendus pushed him aside and began to inspect the bins, completely ignoring him. He stopped by a young trader and looked her over appreciatively. “What's your name,” he asked. She was a two mug she-dwarf by Grendus' estimate, which means it only took two mugs of ale before she started to look attractive (sadly, that was a compliment). She giggled, a little taken aback at being addressed, but regained her composure quickly.
“Urist sir,” she said, trembling only slightly. Grendus didn't remember her from the caravan last year, which probably meant she was new. Good, that would make the trading a lot easier than dealing with old sewer brew breath. Grendus knew
his type, it was why he had left the mountainhome. Dealing with so many young mayors who were overconfident with their dozen bins of mugs had made him arrogant, believing he could scam them out of hundreds of thousands of db of goods. If he let him have his way, within a year he would be demanding large amounts of raw goods for meager supplies, while 'forgetting' to pack the goods they would need to set up real industries.
“Urist?” Grendus repeated. She nodded. “Alright Urist, you seem like a thorough dwarf. Do you know the total value of the caravan?”
She giggled nervously, then muttered “16000, give or take. I haven't added the profit from the last fortress we stopped at.” She blushed slightly. It was kind of fetching, Grendus decided she was a one mug dwarf, though it would have to be strong ale.
Grendus nodded, smiling gently. “Take out the value of the anvils and the corkscrew,” he said, gesturing to the items in a stack next to Stinky, who scowled and sent a wave of filth through the depot. “That would come out to... say 12000?” Grendus smiled and met her eyes, which shifted away unsure.
“More like 10000 sir,” she said uncomfortably. “You should really be talking to the caravan master, trading is his job.”
Grendus laughed. “I had trouble seeing the goods, my eyes were watering so badly.” She laughed genuinely at that. Apparently the entire caravan hated the head trader as well, no wonder he had taken such an instant dislike to everyone. “There's a smile. Can you help me out?”
Her smile broadened, and she looked up. “Yes. Let me get a trade records slate,” she said confidently. Grendus could feel the trade master's eyes boring holes in his head, but he didn't care. It had been fun to put that bully in his place, even moreso since this was the biggest trading post in the kingdom short of the mountainhome itself. With the sale registered under Urist instead of old hydrabreath this caravan would be registered as a complete failure for him with pitiful profits. With some luck the trader's guild would stick him in a desk job, or at least make him take a bath and stick him on a diet of plump helmets instead of the raw meat he was apparently living on.
After the dust had settled, it cost Weakwhips all the goods they had brought to the depot, but they walked away with enough leather to thoroughly insult every elf who lived and still arm the dwarves for the ensuing conflict, plus a second mountain of meats, cheeses, and booze. Grendus and Urist spent most of the night calculating the value of the trade (among other things), and before Dfts got too angry about his meager accommodations the miners got around to engraving his office, which put him in a more forgiving mood, especially as several of the engravings celebrated his first and second election.
Unfortunately, that exhausted the lions share of the goblin's clothing, so they would either need to set up a valuable industry or they would need another “shipment” of goblins before the human caravan (as he fully expected his successor to seize the elvish caravan, freakin hippies).
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Topic: The Unofficial CWAL Game Weakwhips (open signups) (Read 4099 times)